PFTC The Professional Firearms Trainers Council

[NoStepOnSnek88]

Afternoon All
There was a second urgent application launched by the PFTC to interdict various state role players such as the QCTO and SASSETA from developing a skills program to replace the current firearm training qualification.
In simple terms the current training takes 2 to 3 days in order to be trained to apply for a competency certificate. A skills programme must , by law , be a minimum of two weeks long.
Many problems become immediately apparent. Very few people can afford to take two weeks off work to qualify to obtain a competency certificate and the cost would increase proportionately to the amount of time required. Trainers have also indicated that there is not enough training material or training required to fill two weeks.
The PFTC raised concerns that the state role players do not have a legal mandate to quality assure firearm training which vests in the PFTC by virtue of the 11 July court order and that policy and consultative requirements had been circumvented by the QCTO and SASSETA.
The judge ruled the application was not urgent and struck the matter from the roll and gave what we perceive to be a mild cost order. He excluded the cost of a second advocate and gave costs on a lower than normal scale. He did so because he indicated in argument that although the matter was not urgent, there may be contempt of the 11 July court order and that he had serious concerns with both the rationale for the skills program and the manner in which the state roll players had gone about trying to development the skills program when there was no apparent need for it and in the absence of a satisfactory explanation why it was needed.
We will be back again in court shortly.

Latest update from Martin Hood.

[NoStepOnSnek88]

Morning All

Happy New year . My first post for the year is not a happy one.

Two important issues need to be discussed and I will start with the first, firearm training.

Many of you are aware , and I summarise , of the function of the PFTC is quality assuring firearm training.

If you have a competency certificate, you would have been trained by an accredited training institution who , upon successful completion , would submit your results to the PFTC who verify and quality assure the training and issue a statement of results.

A comparison is Umalusi who do exactly the same for matric exams.

This system has been in place since 2013 and is self funding and because it is not government run, has much less fraud and corruption.

The firearm training qualification 50480 expired in June last year , like many thousands of others and was not extended. The PFTC had submitted a new qualification but , typically of organs of state , SASSETA and the QCTO were too busy at the feeding trough to approve it.

We obtained a court order extending the qualification pending the finalisation and registration of a new qualification , and the litigation is pending, again with government and organs of state doing everything possible to delay getting into court , aided and abetted by highly paid [ by you] private lawyers.

The proposed solution , from SASSETA and the QCTO , which involves taking away the quality assurance function from the PFTC and putting it , presumably back inhouse to SASSETA , is a skills development program to replace the qualification.

You might think " OK, so what? "

Here's the issue. It is proclaimed educational policy that a skills development program must be a minimum of two weeks long .

Before any of you say "no way , it won't happen" , it is .

I have draft documents from SASSETA, on a QCTO letterhead for the proposed " Handgun handler for private use" skills program which is set at NQF level three and requires 10 credits. The equivalent program for business use of a handgun is 11 credits. A credit is equal to 10 hours of notional learning.

If this proposed program becomes the legal requirement for training for firearm possession [ and saps have bought into the process, because I have Legal Services comments on the program that make it clear that they want it to be ] it means as follows.

A new applicant for a competency certificate [ ie who has never previously had one] to possess one type of firearm, for example a handgun , must do two weeks training because a credit is 10 hours of notional learning and 10 credits equals 100 hours of learning which equals 10 days. For one category of firearm .

If you want to obtain business use training for all four categories of firearm possession , ie handgun rifle, shotgun, semiauto rifle /PCC my calculation adds up to 800 hours of training or 16 weeks of training.


Think about who can afford to and has the time do this and what the consequences will be for firearm ownership.

From Martin Hood's WhatsApp group.

[Treeman]

Important post this - VERY !

[NoStepOnSnek88]

Important post this - VERY !

Indeed it is, many will brush this off as hearsay or non of a concern.


Gunsite Forum
https://www.gunsite.co.za/forums/showthread.php?111246-PFTC-The-Professional-Firearms-Trainers-Council/page3

Mybroadband forum:

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/pftc-the-professional-firearms-trainers-council.1298468/post-33576410